| Today's Managing Health Care Costs Number is 89% |
Tom Price told ABC's This Week yesterday that insurers should "dust off how they did business before ObamaCare."
Here's how they did business.
They did extensive underwriting on the individual market wherever allowed, so they would never even offer insurance to those with significant illness. They excluded many of the benefits most valuable for those with illnesses, hoping to chase them away. They imposed lifetime limits just in case those who appeared healthy got sick. They often capped benefits in the smallest of fonts in the policies, so that for instance a hospital day could never be reimbursed at over $1000, leaving patients who thought they had coverage with ruinous bills.
Sure, premiums can be lower if insurers design their products so that they don't provide meaningful coverage to the patients with the greatest need.
We shouldn't allow insurers to dust off this type of behavior. We should banish it to the dustbin of history.
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